More, More, More

This year I have tried taking more time for reflection on learning.

At the end of our first unit, all those moons ago, I tried a switch to a different way of having the students do their portfolios. I tried using one of Kath Murdoch's reflection sheets - Targeting Your Learning. I chose this particular one because I thought the coloring and the targets looked the most friendly for grade ones and twos.


That first time I had the students reflect on their work in this way, many of the students had forgotten the assignments they had chosen to reflect on. From there I decided to have them reflect right after they complete a task. Of course, there is not always time to do that, but the more we do it, the smoother it goes.

For my next unit, I want my students to even more reflection on their learning, as well as reflection about how they learn.

The Interactive Wall

The math attached to my new unit, Fairy Tales, is Data Handling and Probability.

I came in ready to start the math portion of the unit getting to know what the students knew about graphs, but after I visited the kindergarten room, I came away with the idea for a name graph.

The name graph picture showed squares with letters on it lined up like a bar graph (like what is shown above).

Especially after seeing what they knew (or thought they knew) about graphs, this was appealing since it was straight-forward and seemed like a good way to get them into graphing.

But this graph has been more than I had expected. It is allowing me to:

• have the students start to learn how to develop questions from data
• go into addition and subtraction concepts. My question for them today was, "How many ways can you get ten letters with the names?" My next will be to assign a point value for each letter and have them add and subtract with them.
• introduce averaging (thank you CD!)
• introduce multiplication and division concepts
• get them engaged
• find and sort

My next step after I use this graph for a while is to include other classes and have them predict outcomes.

What I did not do, and I wish I had, was ask them the questions I did before we did the graph. For example, I wish I had asked them how many students have the same number of letters in our class and watched them try to figure it out. They should know that graphs are good because of their visual nature.

I will correct that mistake that when we expand to graphing another class.

What's a Wop?

Many moons ago now when it was still warm out and the students would come in from recess looking like they just got out of a pool, I tried an idea [I got from one of the Japanese teachers] to help my students better grasp word families; words with the same pattern.

This beginning was a great way to assess where my students were. Could they see the pattern? Did they know words that ended in __op?

As this was the beginning of the year, I put up on the board the pattern "__op". Then I asked the students to give me a letter to fill in the word.

While the students were giving me ideas, I put them on the board. While I was doing this, I was explaining the words they did not know. I did this until they gave me a word that made no sense. As soon as they gave me that word (this time it was wop), I put it on the board and told them that a wop was an animal and they had to draw it.

They all looked at me as if I were crazy and doing something really unfair. They complained that they did not know what it looked like. I again told them that did not matter and that anything they drew would be OK. I told them to use their imaginations. This was really hard for them after always being asked to draw something they had seen before.

After they drew their version of the wop, I told then to add to the picture some of the other words that we came up with.

This is a Wop.

This was the first time I did it, and I tried it again a few days after this, but it was not as good. I am going to try this again though. Maybe I need to leave more time in between when I do the activities to make it more successful.

Teaching Search to First and Second Graders

After hearing about these search lessons on thethinkingstick.com, I had to try it. I have been meaning to write a reflection on my experience for a while now; better late than never.

I was excited to see what my students knew about a search engine. After seeing how proficient some kindergartners were with an iPad, flipping around and finding pictures with ease, I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised by my own class.

Something I did not anticipate however, was that our school network blocked the ads from Google (at least that's what I assume was happening since no ads showed up). So, I modified the lesson a little bit.

I started by showing them the different aspects of a search results page. Since I am teaching grade 1-2, I focused on the "Images" tab and how to find images. The above picture is a search I did today, and this did not happen last time, but if I was doing the lesson today, I would also talk about the information to the right of the results. (I would also talk about the good and bad of Google changing things weekly.)

To find ads, I went to Pitara Biographies for Kids. There are lots of ads on this site.

At another time we were talking about the continents, and I asked the kids to draw the continents. They used the school's iPads, and mostly focused on using Google's Image Search.

The earlier students can become familiar with how to search, the

What Kids Say

Today I was showing my kids some pictures from our sports day yesterday, and one boy commented on this photo by saying, "It's good but it's all boketeru [blurry]."

I tried to explain to him that the blur was a good thing because it makes it easier to see the subject.

He just smiled at me.